


Gold

by huntedjunker



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Children, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2019-03-30 09:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13949073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huntedjunker/pseuds/huntedjunker
Summary: Another memory that may not have happened - a glimpse into a young Junkrat’s childhood.





	Gold

A breeze blew in through the broken windows, the missing louvres lost to time, didn’t reach through to the centre of the abandoned house. Banks of red dirt filled the room, the furthest away, smooth and shaped by the wind. Digging through the heaps was fruitless – whatever treasures were buried under there, were worthless; if they existed. The good stuff worth recycling for a new and better purpose were hidden away inside protective places, such as closets or home-safes.

Distant shouts and laughter rang out, the other kids busy working hard to discover any scrap – sometimes work was interrupted when somebody found something unexpected, or new, from the time before. The time before some of them were born, more commonly remembered as a hazy snapshot of some holiday or special event (birthdays and trips to the beach were popular). These days play and work melted together – life was too short to waste being a misery-guts.

Broken off from the group, Fawkes has been preoccupied with pulling out the drawers of a bed-side cabinet. Easy to do, as the piece of furniture had tipped over in the past, and split in some places. The old wood was shoddy quality, MDF, which made it too easy to kick in and pry apart – the bottom drawer, thicker than the rest, was locked.

The gang of kids had strayed from the small community, as they often did, running off to explore the uninhabited houses that lined the street outside the patrolled wall. Fallen into disarray, the rusted skeletons of utes and cars turning the cul-de-sac into their private playground, the blazing heat of the midday sun had driven the children inside a house and continue their mischief indoors. At age ten, Fawkes wasn’t the oldest; the median was about eight. More well-behaved than the true feral kids, this gang had no morals when it came to ransacking. With no grown-ups about, they’d helped themselves to whatever was there for the taking.

Crouched next to the cabinet, the miniature geiger counter idly ticking away on his belt, Fawkes had slowed down. An old, cracked leather roll was in the drawer, it’s contents spilled out after it had fallen out. The glint of metal had caught his eye; a mess of tarnished rings, bracelets, and a single chain, all heaped together. In the burned husk of a home, these were an unanticipated discovery.

The voices of his friends drowned out, faded to indistinct voices, completely ignored. Fawkes hadn’t placed any monetary value in the gold or gems, even though they’d demand an impressive price when fenced to the right trader the next time one was due for a stay-over. The simplistic beauty in these man-made, refined pieces, prime examples of what men and woman pored over trinkets that today were deemed rubbish.

_Men killed for these._

Stretching a hand out, the young junker’s fingers closed in a tight fist over the necklace, when —

— a sudden shout sliced through the haze of his thoughts; lifting his head, the scenery coming into focus, a second shout cut the last thread of the memory memory that had blinded him. In front of him was the idling engine of the bullet-ridden bushmaster he was presently riding, the geiger meter counting out of sync with the truck, sounding exactly like the old one he had when… _when, what?_

Waiting in the driver’s seat, Junkrat had been left to watch the truck whilst the others had grouped together to investigate a blockade. The heat rising off the cracked bitumen transformed the approaching figures into blurry shapes, which eased the nearer they got. His open hand poised over the shiny key left in the ignition lock, in perfect imitation of another time that now eluded him, Junkrat turned it, the bushmaster’s engine waking with a deeper roar, as if to herald his companions as they climbed into the back and passenger-side.


End file.
